BG3 – You can be Arctic Druid Angela too Seven

CW: Partial nudity. Kinda. I tried to keep it to the PG-13 level. Also, more Druid Angela stuff, as if you didn’t figure that out from the title.

Big surprise! … Not!

If you’ve read along in this series of essays on creating Arctic Druid Angela in Baldur’s Gate 3, as soon as I mentioned the possibility of another essay in my last post, you knew there was going to be a seventh.

Will there be an eighth? I don’t think so (though one never knows). Reasons:

I’m done with my tests, at least for now. I’ll report on three combats below, the last different from the first two. I don’t have a clue about any other Arctic Druid build changes to pursue.

I don’t have any other fanfic tidbits to bookend this series of essays.

Oh, I’m not done with the fanfic! I’ve got entries planned. But they don’t fit into the story I’ve wrapped around the tests I’ve done forked off of a playthrough 8’/2.5 game save.

My little fantasies about Arctic Druid Angela, perhaps Karma and Wings, and even Daphne and Creak, will continue. They just won’t be in this context.

To repeat something I’ve said before: If all this analysis makes your head spin, this is what it’s like to play either BG3 or D&D at advanced levels. And believe me, I’m not an expert. If someone with real experience in Gygaxian systems were to read these essays, they’d be unimpressed.

As I’ve said, I love the game, but I loathe the system.

Cold Snap

In the first post in this essay series about the Arctic Druid Angela build, I mentioned the Cold Snap dagger.

My comment in that essay:

Cold Snap fits her build thematically. However, for it to work, enemies have to both miss her and fail their CON Saving Throw. By Act 3 they won’t do that often enough to make it worthwhile.

I followed that a bit later with an edit:

Errata: A couple of weeks after I wrote the above, I learned that there is a bug in the implementation of Cold Snap. Despite what the tooltip says, if an enemy misses they don’t make a CON Save; they’re simply Chilled. All things considered, dual-wielding with Mourning Frost in her off hand is still probably better for Druid Angela. But, as you can see in the next post, enemies miss her a lot, so there might be situations in which Cold Snap is worth considering.

The test I describe below was to understand whether Cold Snap is worth considering. That is, is having Mourning Frost in her main hand and Cold Snap in her off hand better than having Markoheshkir in her main hand and Mourning Frost in her off hand?

The results surprised me. I’ll get into the details below, but what the first two combats showed me was that the Cold Snap combination was amazing.

However, I couldn’t be sure whether the reason why those combats went so well was that I also went through a more elaborate preparation procedure. So I set up a separate combat test, in which I went back to the Maroheshkir + Mourning Frost combo but performed the same prep.

The conclusion, which I’ll elaborate on below, is that they’re pretty close.

Which should one pick for Arctic Druid Angela in particular? I’ll address that too.

I’ll also correct some mistakes I made in earlier essays.

Preparations

The gear for this test is similar to that of the last test:

The differences from the last test are:

Mourning Frost in the main hand. As I went over last time, I think that’s a better choice than keeping Markosheshkir.

Cold Snap in the off-hand; the main point of this test.

I became concerned that Druid Angela’s Spell Save DC was getting too low, so I switched her chest armor back to Robe of the Weave.

This time, I remembered to use the Drakethroat Glaive to cast Draconic Elemental Weapon: Lightning on Druid Angela’s off-hand weapon, namely Cold Snap. This adds to both the damage and hit chance of the weapon.

I also used the Protectors Karma and Wings to cast the usual buffs on Druid Angela and her minions:

A major difference from prior tests is that I took my own advice about “pushpocketing” liquid consumables into my minion’s inventories:

All the minions, except for Us the Kitty, got three Potions of Supreme Healing. Us did not get any consumables, because I discovered that it can’t consume any.

I was puzzled by this for a while, until I realized: Us doesn’t have a mouth, so it can’t drink anything! (If I really remembered my essay, I could have tried throwing an Elixir on it.)

Every minion, apart from Us, was given and consumed an Elixir:
- Aegean the Water Element and Creak the Wood Woad drank Elixirs of Cloud Giant Strength. As I previously discussed, their attacks are based on Strength. These Elixirs provide a substantial boost to their attack chance and their damage.
  
  Druid Angela has pushpocketed an elixir onto Aegean the Water Elemental, and he’s about to use it. This image is from the preparation before the third battle; I learned from the first two not to stint on the healing potions for the minions.
- Daphne the Dryad drank an Elixir of Peerless Focus. If she casts Spike Growth on the battlefield to restrict the enemies’ movement, Druid Angela wants Daphne to maintain Concentration on it even if she’s hit.
  
  Here we see Druid Angela in mid-pushpocket of consumables into Daphne the Dryad’s inventory.
  
  All these new consumables have been added to Daphne’s skill wheels. Since the elixir will last until the next Long Rest, she might as well drink it now.
- Scratch got Elixir of Heroism. In addition to improving his hit chance, he’s Druid Angela’s weakest minion in both hit points and damage. Any improvements in either is therefore a good thing.
  
  Scratch got this because, of course, he’s a Hero! I used to disparage the Elixir of Heroism, and I still do for major characters. But it’s excellent for minions.
- For Iva and Eva, the Ice Mephits, I used Elixir of Heroism in one test and Elixir of Viciousness in another. Neither seemed to make a big difference, but Druid Angela had the Elixirs to spare.

The minions who held weapons that could do Bludgeoning damage, Daphne and Creak, each got a Diluted Oil of Sharpness. I’ll have more to say about this choice below.

I also gave them Crawler Mucus and Malice to re-coat their weapons after the Steel Watcher was brought down. However, I didn’t remember to use them. It’s may have been better for me to stick to the Oil even against humanoid guards; those poison coatings only affects targets that fail a Constitution Saving Throw, and the guards have a good chance of succeeding that throw.

This is a nice weapon coating to use. If it affects an enemy, it’s like the Hold Person spell: they’re helpless against your attacks.

Malice is not quite as good as Crawler Mucus, because enemy is still able to attack. But Malice is easier to make using Alchemy.

In general, when it comes to weapon coatings I prefer any that apply the Poisoned condition, like those above, over those that do damage; I’ll even take Basic Poison if nothing else is available. The reason is that Poisoned causes a reduction in the target’s Saving Throws and Ability Checks. I’d rather reduce the enemy’s ability to hurt me than to add a few extra damage points.

Purple Worm Toxin is an example of a weapon coating that I’m not likely to use. It can do damage, but doesn’t affect the enemy’s abilities. To counterbalance that, it requires a CON 19 saving throw to resist, making it the most likely poison to affect enemies in the game.

Thisobald’s Brewed-Up Bellyglummer is a compromise: It both applies the penalties due to being Poisoned and it does some damage. Its chief advantage is that, with a CON 17 saving throw, it’s harder to resist than most other poisons. However, the ingredients to make it are rarer. I didn’t use it in these tests.

Creak also got a Potion of Glorious Vaulting to triple his jump distance. He has a problem with battlefield mobility, especially if he gets too far from Daphne’s Nature’s Step aura and starts tripping on Druid Angela’s Ice surfaces.

This proved very handy for him in combat; better for him to jump over the ice than to walk on it.

Here are Creak’s skill wheels after he receives his consumables. The Potions of Glorious Vaulting are right next to the Elixir of Cloud Giant Strength on his wheel. He might as well drink the elixir now, but since the potion only lasts ten turns, he should wait on that one until the combat starts.

As for Druid Angela, in one test she used Oil of Bane and in another she used Malice. Again, it’s all too easy for the enemies to resist these effects. Perhaps one enemy, if that, in each combat was affected by her weapon coating.

Druid Angela used this because typical enemies are much more likely to fail a Charisma Saving Throw than a Constitution Saving Throw.

The minions aren’t the only ones with new consumables on their skill wheels. I found that it was easier to perform my immediate pre-battle prep if I put the items on my skill wheel, going counter-clockwise from the 3 o’clock position: Malice, Potion of Flying, Mirror Image, Haste, then rush forward to cast Create Water. All of these potions/spells are time-limited, so it’s best if I can invoke them with as few delays as possible.

Didn’t it take a long time to set this all up? It did. But as I know from expert videos like this one, long set-ups before tricky combats are not unusual at high BG3 difficulty levels. Since my long-term goal is to get Druid Angela in shape to solo Tactician difficulty, this sort of set-up is likely to become common during that playthrough.

Here’s an example of the results. Druid Angela has just pushpocketed an Elixir of Heroism and some healing potions onto Scratch. There’s no reason to delay, so Scratch is about to drink the Elixir using his ability wheel.

Also, in a real playthrough, I wouldn’t be restarting and re-buffing for the same combat repeatedly. The buffed minions would accompany Druid Angela from battle to battle. Hopefully they wouldn’t need to be re-summoned and restocked each time.

A key weapon coating

Let’s take a look at Daphne’s and Creak’s weapon coating, and why it made an impact in combat.

Got a staff? Attacking an enemy with Bludgeoning Resistance? This is the weapon coating for you!

The Diluted Oil of Sharpness is excellent against the Steel Watcher, the most potent creature in these tests.

I made some incorrect statements about how the Watcher’s Bludgeoning Resistance works in previous essays. Let’s set the record straight.

The mistake I made was not fully understanding the meanings of the icons in the Resistances column:

This icon, with the single up-arrow, means that the creature is Resistant (takes half damage) from non-magical sources of the damage type in the icon. In this case, that’s Bludgeoning, the kind of damage done by staffs, clubs, hammers, maces, etc.

This icon, with the double up-arrows, means that the creature is Resistant to both magical and non-magical sources of the damage type in the icon. In this case, it means the Steel Watcher is Resistant to all forms of Piercing damage, include magical bows and daggers.

This means the creature is completely immune to this type of damage. In this case, since a Steel Watcher is a non-biological robot, it can’t be affected by Poison, including weapon coatings like Crawler Mucus and Malice; those are for the humanoid guards, not the Watcher. Undead creatures are also typically immune to Poison.

If a shield icon like this has a gray outline instead of a yellow outline, it means that the creature is only immune to non-magical sources of that damage type. That’s rare to see, but it’s worth looking for.

This icon with the down-arrow means that the creature is Vulnerable (takes double damage) from attacks of this damage type. This is what Arctic Druid Angela strives for: Both Wet and Chilled creatures are Vulnerable to Cold, and take double damage from her Cold-based attacks and spells like Ray of Frost and Ice Storm.

Armed with these explanations, let’s understand what happens when Creak, Daphne, or Angela strike a Steel Watcher with their staffs.

Without doing anything special, Daphne and Creak strike with basic staffs. The damage is not magical. So the Steel Watcher, who is Resistant to non-magical Bludgeoning damage, takes only half damage from their attacks.

It’s not just the Dryad and Wood Woad. Aegean the Water Elemental may be a magical creature, but their Bludgeoning attacks are not magical. If you look at the detail, you’ll see that Aegean’s Bludgeoning attack did only half damage. The Cold damage was a different story, but let’s consider one thing at a time.

If you make the staff magical, then the Steel Watcher is no longer Resistant to it. It takes normal damage from a staff attack.

This is from the third battle described below. Druid Angela attacks the Steel Watcher with her off-hand staff, Mourning Frost. If you look at the description of Mourning Frost above, in Druid Angela’s gear, you’ll see “Weapon Enchantment + 1”. That means the weapon is magical. So the Steel Watcher takes full damage from the Bludgeoning attack. Again, the Cold damage is a different story.

If you look a few lines above in the Combat Log (remember, read the lines from the bottom up), you’ll see that the Steel Watcher saved against the effects of the Malice poison on Druid Angela’s staff. This was automatic, since Watchers are Immune to Poison.

If the staff is magical, and the Steel Watcher becomes Vulnerable to Bludgeoning damage, then it takes double damage from the Bludgeoning attack. Note that if only one of those prerequisites is true (e.g., the staff is not magical, but the Steel Watcher is Vulnerable to Bludgeoning) then it takes the normal damage from the attack.

Here’s an example of when it all comes together. The Steel Watcher was Frozen; you can see it lost that condition after Daphne’s blow landed. Daphne had previously cast Strengthened Shillelagh on her staff, which makes it magical. So her blow does double damage.

Here’s an more extreme example. If you look at the attack roll, you’ll see that Daphne rolled a natural 20 to hit, which means it was a Critical Hit, which does double damage. Since she attacked with a magical staff, on a Frozen Steel Watcher, she did quadruple damage!

What this illustrates is that, in a combat in which she knows she’s not going to cast Spike Growth, perhaps she should use Elixir of Viciousness instead of Elixir of Peerless Focus, to increase her Critical Hit chance.

In a previous essay, I complained that Creak the Wood Woad didn’t do much damage against a Steel Watcher. Diluted Oil of Sharpness is the answer. If he applies it to his weapon in the first round of combat, his staff becomes magical. This overcomes the Steel Watcher’s Resistance to Bludgeoning damage. (He consumes the Potion of Glorious Vaulting, to triple his jump distance, on his second turn of combat.)

Daphne the Dryad also used the Diluted Oil of Sharpness, in the combat turn after she cast Strengthened Shillelagh. Since the latter already made her staff magical, all the former did was add +1 to her Attack and Damage rolls. That’s nothing to sneeze at, but in the future I’d use something different that would make a bigger impact if it affected the target, like Crawler Mucus.

The other minions don’t use weapons; e.g., Aegean the Water Elemental attacks with their fists. So anything that affects weapons like Diluted Oil of Sharpness or Crawler Mucus won’t do anything for them.

Tests

You may remember from my last essay:

If the opportunity arises to make an enemy Frozen, I can take it. However, it should not be the goal of my strategy.

So freezing enemies wasn’t the focus of my strategy in the following tests… and I found that I froze them left, right, and center.

The “secret” is scattering water bottles all over the place.

I’m not going to do the play-by-play like I did in the last essay. Rather, I’ll just highlight some key moments.

There were three battles:

The standard combat, using the Cold Snap dagger for the first time.

That worked so well that I marched the team to a second location, in which I knew they’d face two Steel Watchers and eight guards at once.

To understand whether the success of the previous two battles was due to Cold Snap, I repeated the standard combat but prepped with Markoheshkir + Mourning Frost as in prior tests, instead of the new combination of Mourning Frost + Cold Snap.

First battle

A typical opening move in one of these tests: Druid Angela casts Create Water to start the combat; the Steel Watcher goes first; leaps over to the minions; and slams them with an attack that Maims a couple of them. In previous tests, this was a problem. Not anymore! The Maimed condition can be cured by drinking a Healing Potion, and Druid Angela has pushpocketed those potions onto all the minions.

Note all the water bottles on the ground; Druid Angela placed them there before the combat began.

Some things to take away from this Combat Log: Note how Wings took on some of the damage from the minions on whom she cast Warding Bond. Druid Angela rolled only 2 on her Attack roll with Ray of Frost, and she still hit; she’s accumulated enough hit bonuses that she can’t miss unless she rolls a natural 1. Because the Steel Watcher was made Wet at the start of combat, it’s Vulnerable to Cold; if she’d worn the Potent Robe, the spell might have done 4 more points of damage, but it would have been a bit more likely to miss without the Robe of the Weave’s Arcane Enchantment.

Druid Angela has nothing better to do with her Bonus Action, so she strikes with an off-hand attack using the Cold Snap dagger. You can see only 3 Piercing damage; the Steel Watcher has Resistance to Piercing damage and nothing has been done to address that, nor does Druid Angela particularly care. The Cold damage is still doubled; it’s not what Ray of Frost can do, but it’s better than nothing.

Druid Angela absolutely wants to provoke the Steel Watcher’s Opportunity Attack. That means the reset of her minions can duck in-and-out with attacks of their own. Oh, the Steel Watcher missed due to Mirror Image? Thanks to Cold Snap, it’s Chilled now.

It’s Eva the Ice Mephit’s turn. She could attack the Steel Watcher… but what the heck. The water bottle is right there. And the Steel Watcher is Chilled.

Iva the Ice Mephit: “Daphne, you’ve got a staff, and the Steel Watcher is Vulnerable to Bludgeoning damage. Would you mind casting Strengthened Shillelagh and give the Frozen Watcher a good bonk?” Daphne: “I never say no to a good bonk.”

I said I wouldn’t go for Frozen as a goal, but the tag-team opportunity was right there. Aegean hit the Watcher with Slam to make it Chilled…

Iva moves in to shatter another water bottle, to apply Wet on top of Chilled to freeze the Steel Watcher again…

Scratch moves in to take a bite. It won’t do much damage, but why not? Note how Daphne’s earlier attack, augmented by Grasp of the Forest, left the Steel Watcher Entangled with a vine.

Creak the Wood Woad coats his staff with the Diluted Oil of Accuracy and gives the Frozen Steel Watcher a good bonk of his own. This removes the Frozen condition from the Watcher, but note the overall result: The Steel Watcher is down to 95/267 hit points, and was Frozen twice in the first round of combat. These are pretty good results for a tactic that I’d abandoned.

Minions can’t drop items from their inventories the way regular characters can. But they can Move items on the ground. Here we see Iva “walking” a water bottle over to the Watcher, in order to attack the bottle and make the Watcher Wet again.

Iva is brought down by a hit from the Steel Watcher, but Scratch is there to Help and bring him back up. When Scratch helps, he actually licks the fallen creature back to life!

From this Combat Log, reading from the bottom up, we see Scratch helping Iva back up, Scratch using a healing potion on himself, Iva using a healing potion too, and Aegean administering the coup de grace on the Steel Watcher. Although Druid Angela provided the initial damage at the start of the combat via her spells, it was the minions working together that brought down the Watcher.

While all the rest was going on, Druid Angela was taking out the guards. Druid Angela: “I beg your pardon? Would you please attack me? Oh, you missed? You know you’re Chilled now, right?”

Druid Angela: “You do know that being Chilled means you take twice the damage from my Rays of Frost? I’m sure you do now.”

Eva: “Hey, Aegean, want to freeze another guard?” Aegean: “Sure! It’s easy because Druid Angela has dropped water bottles everywhere she goes.”

For the first time in a while, every single minion survived the first test battle.

An unusual survivor in this battle: Trina. She’s a civilian who stands next to Fist Jerbold. When Druid Angela casts an Ice Storm in the area, Trina is usually a casualty. In this battle, Druid Angela never cast an Ice Storm.

Trina was not particularly grateful. She’s caught up in concerns about the Steel Watchers, not acknowledging (as we learned in a previous story) her participation in Gortash’s plans.

Second battle

The guards were kind enough to assist in their own defeat. Volley is an area attack; you can see how it hit many of the minions. It also hit lots of water bottles in the area. This sprayed water all over guards and Watchers alike. Thank you, Fist Aggralix!

There’s something missing from this Combat Log. Can you spot it? Clue: Something that happened in the first combat has stopped happening, and the minions are taking more damage.

This was a high moment in the combat. The guards had circled around Druid Angela. So she walked away from them. Most of them missed. Every one that missed was Chilled by Cold Snap. She hit the area with an Ice Storm, which damaged everyone in the area… including a water bottle she left behind. Result: mass freezing.

A second Ice Storm, and all those guards were down. Four enemies, originally at full health, brought down in a single round.

Her turn wasn’t over. One attack with her off-hand Cold Snap dagger, and a Steel Watcher enters self-destruct mode.

One round. Five down. This is why she’s **Arctic Druid Angela**.

This battle was harder. There were twice the number of Steel Watchers and twice the number of guards. Only Aegean and Us made it through.

There’ll be more about the aftermath of the second battle in the fanfic at the end of this essay.

Third battle

The battle started as usual. After all the preparations, open with Create Water to make the opponents Wet. This time, Druid Angela was first in the turn order. She moved forward and dropped a lot of water bottles.

This was followed by an Ice Storm. No, Trina didn’t survive.

She followed up with a nice “bonk” from her off-hand staff. The Wet Condition makes a target Vulnerable to both Cold and Lightning. The extra Lightning damage from the Draconic Elemental Weapon of Drakethroat Glaive doesn’t do much. But Druid Angela has seen times when it’s Electrified a water surface.

By the following round, all it took was a couple of Rays of Frost…

,,, and one more off-hand bonk to defeat the Steel Watcher.

But the battle got complicated. A nearby Steel Watcher joined the fray. Strangely, the guards behind it did not join too. Perhaps they’d learned of Druid Angela’s fearsome reputation. As you can see, Daphne the Dryad cast Spike Growth to slow it down. However, that had unexpected consequences.

From this combat log, you can tell that the Flaming Fist patrol was summoned by someone named Jarlath. It appears that Jarlath complained because a civilian, Bronte, was killed by Daphne’s Spike Growth. All Bronte had to do was stand still, but folks panic. So perhaps it’s all fair.

The team became aware that a Wizard was on the battlefield when the Wizard Counterspelled Daphne’s Strengthened Shillelagh. It was time to focus attacks on a Wizard again.

The Wizard had slipped on some Ice that was caused by one of Druid Angela’s Rays of Frost. Creak, enhanced by the Potion of Glorious Vaulting, made a spectacular leap…

… and created an ex-Wizard with one bonk.

Then it was time to play a game of “Everyone gang up on the Healer.”

It was harder to make the enemies Frozen without Cold Snap. But with water bottles all over the battlefield, minions to move them into position, and some Chill applied occasionally by Druid Angela’s Ray of Frost or Aegean’s Slam, it could happen.

The Steel Watcher was most obliging, spending most of its time standing on the Spike Growth, engaged with Aegean and Daphne.

I was getting a bit tired by the end of this battle, and didn’t go through the elaborate process of positioning all the subjects in the “Who survived” photo. The only casualty was Daphne.

Conclusions

Using the Cold Snap dagger is almost like cheating. All Druid Angela has to do in order to make her enemies Chilled is run past them and dodge their Opportunity Attacks. They’re not likely to hit her; if they do, they’re not likely to break her Concentration on Haste. Since I added that level of Barbarian and used the Amulet of Greater Health (see essay two in this series for details), she has not lost her Concentration in any of these combats.

In a sense, using Cold Snap is cheating. If the enemies had to make a CON 13 saving throw as it says in the dagger’s tooltip, becoming Chilled and then Frozen would not be so automatic.

From a role-playing perspective, I’m still enamored by the image of Arctic Druid Angela wielding two staffs.

At the moment, I’d say: For Tactician difficulty in general, I think I’d try a combat with two staffs. If that fails, switch to using Cold Snap.

Giving consumables to the minions made a big positive difference. However, there are issues:

It really soaks up potions, elixirs, and coatings. On the other hand, if Druid Angela were part of a party instead of buffing up her minions, her fellow party members would be using a lot of consumables as well.

Druid Angela, Daphne, Creak, Aegean, Iva, Eva, Scratch, and Us make a “party” of eight. In a real adventure, I might also use a Scroll of Animate Dead to create a Skeleton Archer. So they’ll use up consumables at roughly twice the rate of a normal four-person party.

If a character dies, you can usually recover unspent consumables from their body. If a minion dies, they vanish, taking anything that was in their inventory. Minions are more fragile than typical party characters, so this is likely to happen often; for example, consider the casualties from battles two and three in this essay.

One possible work-around for a future Druid Angela “solo” run is to keep Karma and Wings (of course!) but use a Transmutation Wizard in the third hireling slot. Spec them to maximize their chance to brew two potions instead of one, and have them do all the Alchemy.

Speaking of casualties…

One last casualty

This fanfic takes place between battles two and three above. It refers to other fanfic I’ve written, especially the little story in my BG1+2 write-up and the stories I wrote after playthrough 8.